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How to Fix iTunes 12’s Biggest Annoyances

iTunes 12, released with OS X Yosemite, features a new interface, which fits better with Apple’s overall desire for flatness, but changes a lot of the ways that users work with their media library. Apple's iTunes 12 is also controversial, since it changes many of the familiar ways we interacted with our media libraries.

There are a number of annoyances in iTunes 12; some features work differently than before, and some features are missing. Here’s a look at the biggest annoyances of iTunes 12, and how you can fix them.

The Missing Sidebar

The first thing that many people noticed in iTunes 12 was the absence of the long-familiar sidebar. This sidebar, present since the early days of iTunes, grouped all your media libraries (Music, Movies, TV Shows, etc.) and your playlists in one convenient location, giving you quick access to any of the content in your iTunes library.

You can bring the sidebar back, sort of, but it’s not called that any more, and it doesn’t give you access to the same content as it did in the past. When viewing any of your media libraries—accessible by clicking the icons at the top-left of the window—just click Playlists in the navigation bar at the top-center of the iTunes window.

The sidebar that displays shows the currently selected media library, plus all your playlists. You can choose this view in any media library, and you can leave it visible in each one if you wish to always see your playlists.

Note that if the sidebar is not visible, you can make it temporarily visible. Select an item and drag it to the left edge of the iTunes window. The sidebar will display, so you can deposit that item in a playlist.

The Annoying Info Window

You may simply dump your media files in your iTunes library and play them by searching for them, or in shuffle mode. Or, you may have a carefully-curated library, with all your files tagged so you can create smart playlists. If you’re in the latter camp, you are certainly familiar with the Info window, which lets you view metadata about your media files, and change much of it.

iTunes 12 radically changed the Info window. Select a track, then press Command-I, and here’s what you see now:

As you investigate this new window, you’ll find that some of the tags are no longer accessible, and you’ll also note that the tags are contextual; they depend on the type of media file you’ve selected.

If you’re familiar with the older window, and would prefer using it, you can still do so. Just select one or more files, press the Option key, right-click on the selected file(s), and choose Get Info. You’ll see a window almost exactly like that of iTunes 11 and earlier:

If you want a power tool to tag your files, check out Doug Adams’ $2 Multi-Item Edit. This AppleScript-based app gives you one window that displays most of the tags you can edit in iTunes, making it even easier to tag your files; you don’t even need to switch among the various tabs in iTunes’ windows.

The Pesky iTunes MiniPlayer

iTunes has a useful little window called the MiniPlayer. This control window floats above the iTunes window—and your other windows—giving you quick access to the play/pause button, the next and previous buttons, volume controls and more. It also displays how much time remains to be played in the current track, shows artwork, and you can even use it to search your iTunes library. Some people may find it sufficient to control music playback, and not even need the full iTunes window.

However, iTunes 12 changed the way this window is displayed, and it can be a bit confusing.

There are three ways to display the MiniPlayer. First method, you can choose the Window menu, selecting either MiniPlayer or Switch to MiniPlayer. If you choose the former, the MiniPlayer displays above the iTunes window; if you choose the latter, the MiniPlayer displays and replaces the iTunes window.

Or, second method, you can click the album art thumbnail in the iTunes LCD (the part at the top of the iTunes window showing what is playing). The behavior here is different from iTunes 11: when you click this album art thumbnail, this performs the same thing as when you choose Switch to MiniPlayer, hiding the iTunes window. However, if you hold down the Option key when clicking this thumbnail, then the MiniPlayer displays above the iTunes window.

In addition, Apple has reversed the keyboard shortcuts used for the MiniPlayer. With this third method, you now press Command-Option-M to view the MiniPlayer and Command-Shift-M to switch to the MiniPlayer.

You can still click the artwork thumbnail on the MiniPlayer to display album art, together with controls:

When you click the close button on the MiniPlayer, things are also different. Whenever you click this button, the iTunes window displays. If it was hidden, because you switched to the MiniPlayer, closing the small window brings back the full window, which wasn’t the case previously.

Missing Music Videos

In iTunes 11, when you were in your Music library, one of the buttons in the navigation bar—the buttons in the center of the iTunes window above your music—was Videos. This let you view all of your music videos. That button is gone now. So where are the music videos hiding?

Fortunately, they’re still in your Music library, and you can get to them easily. While in your Music library, click Playlists in the navigation bar; you’ll see an entry for Music Videos near the top of the sidebar.

Use these iTunes tips to make things work the way you want, and you'll get used to iTunes 12 in no time!

Would you have preferred Apple to keep the sidebar always visible in iTunes 12? Would it have been better if Apple had sold you the benefits of enabling new features, and invited you to turn them on, rather than leave it to you to retrospectively turn them off? What other annoyances or problems have you encountered in the new iTunes 12? Leave a comment below and have your say.

iTunes 12’s biggest annoyance for me is in the iOS apps section. When looking at the Updates view and clicking on a particular app, the “What’s New” information is gone. Now I don’t know whether or not I should really update (or not!) each app.
The information still exists: it’s automatically displayed in iOS, just in iTunes. 🙁
Anybody know of a secret “defaults” command line that might return the old behavior?

Steven de Mena

Is there actually anything better about iTunes 12?

barely_free

LOL

Pauline Panagiotou Schneider

nope. nothing. they hate us.

Blair Donaldson

Nothing. It’s almost as though Apple decided to make it less user-friendly. They’ve done a good job!

Blair Donaldson

ITunes 12 is a complete disaster. Managing podcasts is more difficult and deleting them from playlists is almost impossible. It used to be nice and simple to manage podcasts and playlists, now Apple has overengineered iTunes to the point that it’s effectively useless apart from basic functions. Why can they not leave well enough alone?

Peter Saxe

They can’t and it makes my life as a music professional, player and educator, one large headache. I’ve just wasted 30 minutes plus trying to figure out how to access the ‘comments’ field on a single track. I’m ready to shoot someone. Please help

Blair Donaldson

Hi Peter. I don’t know what the answer is regarding the “comments” field. When I selected track and Get Info, Details, the comments field is greyed out. Don’t know how to access it either. It might be a bug but how would we know given that iTunes 12 seems to be one series of cock ups after another? Good luck.

thunderthigh

The comments field is accessible in a drop down menu called “add field” or something like that (don’t have the english version installed).

mb presents

I updated to the lastest OS this afternoon and now it looks like the ‘add field’ option was simplified away :*{ I can still make iTunes show comments in the library but can’t see the option to access it through ‘get info’. WTH?
has anyone found a workaround yet?

EDIT
Just realized that one can scroll down the ‘get info’ window, and ‘comments’ is now hiding at its bottom.

I really don’t understand these changes, my laptop screen is already small enough and i don’t want to have to scroll around for something that used to fit perfectly until this afternoon.

Sarah Spoon

I think I figured it out! When you click Command + I to bring up the box that normally allows you to add a comment, when you click the ‘add field’ button, because the comments field is greyed out, click ‘always show current fields’, which will add the comments field to the box, which you can then edit. Apologies if this has already been said elsewhere– I’m just super excited I finally figured it out!

LordS

I know it’s frustrating but “ready to shoot someone”! And yes I know (hope) it’s hyperbole, but still, get a grip.

Charlie35150

The “grip” I’d like to get is on the neck of those responsible for removing anything the user might find handy, and hiding what they absolutely have to let you keep!

Elsa

Seriously. Their job as designers is to make tasks easier, more functional and convenient to the user. Considering the expense of Apple products, the least they could do is not waste users time. Productivity is a major resource, and I would like to see a comprehensive study of the amount of productivity that is lost trying to adjust to their incessant and useless updates. Including the time lost having to participate in discussions such as this since their website and help is not designed to solve real-user problems. Unless you buy their latest product every few months. Planned obsolesence has gone wild at Apple. Steve Jobs, spinning in his grave.

Jim Witte

Even *if* you buy their products ever few months.. They change interfaces in little subtle ways (icons, placement of things, “button bars” versus “list of options”, etc). Which is fine if you’re under 35 and actually *enjoy* “exploring interfaces”, but infuriating (to varying degrees) to people who don’t.

VonMagnum

Everything Johnny Ive has done with iOS and OS X has been a disaster, IMO, but the fanboys just LOVE everything he does. The Kool-Aid is stronger than ever. I hate the new flat “Windows 3.1” style interface in OS X as well. But Windows 8.x is just as awful, IMO and you have the ever present Malware to deal with (i.e. running a miserable malware checker in the background constantly that wants you to reset all the time, etc.). It’s Linux’s chance to move in and clean up… LOL. They’re even more of a joke. I think Desktops are pretty much awful right now in terms of GUI. I’m keeping Mavericks as long as I can.

barely_free

Absolutely, will be using Mavericks until the end. Yosemite is just butt ugly.

What is it with Apple and their aversion to color and depth.

lasvegascolonel

On Windows, the Alt key is equivalent to the Apple Option key but it still doesn’t allow going back to the traditional Get Info box. I like my artwork about 12″ and on Windows when I click the Control key (Command in Apple) I only get the large artwork half the time. In iTunes 11, it was always there. Another defect which hopefully will be addressed on the first update is in Windows (maybe Mac too) it leaves a Data Execution Program notice saying iTunes was shut down (after you shut it down). It eats memory as it sends reports to Microsoft, but is fully recoverable after a disk cleanup or system restore. As an old-timer (I’m almost 70), it takes me several weeks to master each new addition of iTunes. I do like iTunes 12s minimalist look, clean, modern, lines and the light grey colors actually bring out the color in my artwork. Took me awhile to figure out how to delete artwork but I’m getting the hang of it. Back in the 1950s, I had to contend with scratchy 78 rpm records, then scratchy vinyls, so this will be easy.

Grant Jenkins

I’m never quite sure of the Windows equivalent keys for Apples keyboard, so I usually end up trying them all! – Turns out, the Shift key (in this instance) will duplicate the Option key, and then right-clicking will bring up the old Info window. I guess Apple felt it was critical to prevent users from actually assigning the correct (gasp) Genre to individual music files, even those purchased from the iTunes store! – Hope that helps…

star

iTunes 12 is AWFUL! i bought the iPhone 6 plus (128 GB) so that I could eliminate my kindle and my iPod and just use my phone. Well, now it takes FOREVER for me to manually load my songs onto my phone, and then they disappear! I just synced my phone with iTunes, hoping all 8,000+ songs would come back somehow, and I can see that they’re on my phone on iTunes, but they’re not showing up when i look on my phone at all. I think Apple is making it harder for users to play or load music that wasn’t purchased through iTunes, which is ridiculous.

Ian O

You might check that you haven’t been signed up for iTunes Match by default. This has the effect of expecting you to download content dynamically as you select it, yet mysteriously allocates space on disk for it too. Switching back to not enabled may meanyou have allocation for both Match and your physical iTunes database. Which may not fit. A mess, usually requiring a restore and reloading all of those downloads …

Nigel Green

How do I switch off shuffle- There is tick next to Off and if I make the tick next to On the shuffle goes blue meaning it is on I guess and when it is next to Off the shuffle goes black again. When I switch it off it still plays random track. 12.01.26

Ken Pataky

I have the same problem…with v 12.1. Can’t even use the product if you can’t turn off shuffling!!

Vistasp Hodiwala

Damn! I though I was the only moron who couldn’t find my way around this shuffle nonsense. Really, has anyone figured it out yet?

Kerry Hall

shuffle is in the controls tab, pulldown

http://phong.com Phong

It would have been much better if they kept the sidebar on by default. It was disorienting at first to use it without the sidebar, and the app feels useless without it. Having under a tab called ‘Playlists’ makes no sense to me.

Jon Gustav Flø

I just updated, and I can’t figure out how to turn on “browse view”. I don’t want to look at a massive wall of icons to find my music. I named the tracks for a reason.

zebostoneleigh

Column browser AND sidebar on the same page… Can’t seem to see a way to do it. That is perhaps my biggest annoyance with iTunes 12, and you didn’t cover it (probably because there isn’t a fix).

Thanks, however, for that “Info” dialog box hint. Awesome. I just wish there were a key command for it (like [Command-Option-i]).

And I second a comment from below… Podcasts are getting hard and harder to deal with. If they want the genre to thrive, they ought to stop trying to kill it (oh wait – maybe they want it to do die?).

Keith E Gatling

Because I often play my podcasts in playlists along with other music on long trips, I’ve taken to immediately changing the media type from Podcast to Music when I download them.

Life is so much easier that way.

zebostoneleigh

Yeah, that’s how I used to use it and I’d love to do that – but I have so many automatically downloading Podcasts, that it just seems like a tedious workflow for me. But I’m glad I’m not the only one finding the design less than suitable for everyday use.

Flying Goose

Apple is totally over thinking iTunes. I buy half as much music as I used to because opening iTunes has become aversive. I just launched v.12 and spent 30 minutes figuring out how to add a new playlist to the sync. I fondly remember a great feature they once had where you select any track in your library and you got a nice preview list of other tunes you might like to try. Once that was gone my iTunes spending plummeted. I read the online instruction on how to get Genius recommendations. It works great for tunes in my library but not for tunes in the store. Who on earth needs so many (so called) upgrades?? Are you listening Apple? Have you not noticed the steep drop in my spending?

Cate H

So I’ve spent about 2 hours trying to add a playlist – how did you manage to do this Flying Goose??? Am getting very frustrated!

mb presents

can’t u just create a playlist on your itunes and then click on the phone symbol w/in itunes, within that menu click on music and then select the playlist you want under playlists?

Juan Pablo Hoyos

iTunes 12 is very confusing. i can’t read well the text of the songs names because this new Typeface. i prefer iTunes 11 or any older version. i like to know how to change the grey stripes in any list view to the blue ones? thanks

Laramie F.

Whenever I change anything (album, name, artist, or genre info) it automatically goes to the top of the page meaning I have to find the track I was just on – really irritating if there is more than one thing about a track I want to change – any way to stop it from doing this or is this just punishment for getting music outside of iTunes?

SandyShores

I thought I was the only person pissed off by this, glad to know I’m not alone. I wish I could go back to the last version that didn’t do this… :/

Mark P

They broke iTunes after 10.7. Actually I liked 9 best. I like album art, a lot. I like as many possible ways to access and modify my music database (lets not forget, it is a database) as possible. 11 was bummer. My beloved and constantly used cover flow was gone. Applying filters (search) was an ephemeral affair, what with having to constantly restart the search. As, I said, as far as I was concerned they broke it.

It appears that Apple is in the process of killing it. I am so glad I waited to upgrade to 12 until I read a little about it. From what I can see, they have changed iTunes from an elegant way to allow me to enjoy my media from 10.7 until now, to a convenient way for them to sell media.

And that is their prerogative. It is mine to decide that iTunes is no longer what I want to use to access and play my music. I have already begun using a separate metadata editor to manage that part of my library. Unfortunately, there is not yet a viable player available with which I can buy to do that. I imagine one will come soon.

Apple has decided that people like me are not profitable enough to get in their way as they change iTunes to an instrument of commerce to benefit their bottom line. Sad but true. I hope that software developers rapidly come forward and bring back something at least as good as 10.7. I will buy it.

Katie

Thank you, I totally agree with you, itunes 9 was the last good version,
then downhill and couter-intuitive, fewer options for personal choice
from then on. I’ve almost given up using Itunes whereas I used to use it
all the time. I hope someone does make a program like the old itunes.
One thing that I would love is if they’d bring back the colors. I am
over 50 and need the colors to distinguish groupings, such as playlists
from music folder etc. They should at least give us a choice of using
boring all grey or having a variety of colors for sidebar icons. There
is a way to change this in the finder, but not in Itunes 12 that I can
find. But the bottom line is that it is less user-friendly and personal
re: choices, for me anyway, much harder to find things.

Kaye Weist

DO LIKE I DID – REFUSE TO USE IT. DOWNLOAD THE OLD VERSION YOU LIKE AND REFUSE ALL UPDATES. I HAVE A 4G IPOD I USE FOR AUDIOBOOKS THAT IS ABOUT 5 YRS OLD AND LIKE 10.6. – I REJECT ANY AND ALL UPDATES ON ALL MY COMPUTERS. 🙂 AND DON’T HAVE ANY PROBLEMS !!

lymis

That would be fine, except I was forced to update to be able to use my phone.

Jim Witte

@Katie > I am over 50 and need the colors

That’s the problem.. 😉 I think they’re target audience is 32 (under 32, people probably don’t have enough money to drop on a $350 Apple Speaker). And they’re competing against Android and (I presume still) Windows – so they can’t “rest on their laurels” like they used to, and only make improvements to things when they actually *were* improvements.

polarbear4

Can we synch to iphones if we switch to something else, like Spotify?

Slartibartfaster

Mark I totally agree, I loved iTunes 9 and grew to love iTunes 10. I skipped 11 and mistakenly installed 12. It’s a huge pain to go backwards so now I’m stuck.

louisdotcom

Thanks for the article. In answer to your questions, yes, I’d rather have the old sidebar, and, yes, I’d rather Apple provided an option to turn on changes, or at least to revert to version 11 (do they?).

thunderthigh

I usually use short key to jump to the playing song (⌘+L) but it doesn’t work any longer. Instead the short key opens up the downloads window. Anybody know how to get pass this petty but annoying problem?

Eva

This afternoon I installed iTunes12 after a suggestion by a very well educated Apple chat employee in order to improve search functionality. Besides that search has not improved at all (try to find a movie, filtering by language and rental option) I just discovered that both the volume keys on my Apple keyboard and those on my MacBook Pro don’t work in iTunes12! This is insane!!!
In addition, I want the sidebar back as well which shows clearly devices and categories. And the interface is so boring, a big lack of hierarchy, like all Apple design since their damned iOs7. Aren’t they supposed to design for their customers?

Jim

I had to login just to say “Right on!” to Philip Glass! Coincidentally it was frustration with the new design while trying to queue up Einstein on the Beach that brought me to this site.

Lonniusmax

I’m always open to change and am okay adjusting my habits to adapt to new things. One change I don’t appreciate is the behavior of the Miniplayer when toggling the “Up Next” button. I keep my Miniplayer at the bottom of the screen. When I click Up Next the Miniplayer slides up, revealing upcoming songs. However, clicking Up Next again causes the list to slide up into the Miniplayer, thereby causing it to now float halfway up the screen instead of sliding back down to the bottom where I put it. This was a “bug” in earlier versions, and I hope they fix it once again. Otherwise, I’m cool with the changes.

tvrmx

How can I see the path/location of the file I’m listening to? The info window no longer shows it and I can not see anything but the new style info window. Selecting more than one file simply does not work as this article states. ?? I am not operating out of the itunes folder, but my own mp3 collection that i’ve been curating and organizing for coming up on 20 years. This itunes is a nightmare. Jony Ive is the worst.

Are there any mp3 player alternatives out there? Just got a new imac w/ Yosemite and everything I ever did with music is now impossible. Feel like such a slave to Apple and their proprietary/dumbing-down stranglehold. Ugh.

hkm

Exactly my problem!! I cannot see the song that is playing clearly couse the COLOUR PATCH IS NOT VISIBLE ANYMORE. JUST STUPID ICON ON THE SONG GRAPHIC THUMB. I ALWAYS HAVE PROBLEMS NOW FINDING WHAT I LISTEN TO IF I SCROLL UP AND DOWN. JUST ANGRY OVER THIS STUPIDITY!!!

Boudeccea

I’ve had nothing but problems with iTunes since I upgraded to Yosemite. It intermittently hangs (starts/stops). Everything I’ve tried, from reinstalling iTunes, to resetting PRAM, to repairing permissions in Safe Mode has not helped. I’ve been all over the forums to no avail so now have to resort to Apple Care for $29!

Mark M.

Hey Kirk-

I’ve had problems ever since the advent of iTunes
11.x. I run iTunes on an HP laptop with Windows 7. When i installed 11.x it would not load properly and hung up my system. I finally had to do a system restore from a previous restore point. Since then i quit installing updates until iTunes 12 came out.

With version 12.0 my BIGGEST issue is with syncing podcast to my iPhone 3G. When i try to select which podcast(s) to sync by clicking on the check box, it selects the one above the one i clicked on – weird! Also, I’m having issues with deselection. Mostly I just can’t do it! Am I alone in this? I’ve searched various websites, forums and communities and have found no one else reporting this issue.

Thanks – Mark M.

http://www.mcelhearn.com/ Kirk McElhearn

I’ve not encountered that problem, or heard about it. I have no idea what could be causing it; if you’re doing this on a laptop, you’re presumably using a trackpad. Have you tried with a mouse?

Mark M.

Kirk –

Thanks for your reply. Yes I do use a mouse as I’m not fond of the touch-pad.

Let me ask you – is there a 3rd-party app that does a good job of replacing most the iTunes functions (i.e. backup, syncing, podcast downloads, etc.)? I could care less about iTunes AppStore access!

Thanks again! – Mark M.

Emilie Presley

can’t figure how to delete apps from iTunes 12

mb presents

from itunes or from your gadgets while connected to itunes?

AsianDawn

Question: Does anyone know if you can make the iTunes video playback control panel bigger? The reason I ask is that the panel is so small that moving forward/backward is very imprecise. I’m hoping that a bigger panel would mean more precise control over how far back or forward I want to go. Any/all comments greatly appreciated.

Chris

My itunes says I have one video file at 11.1 GBs on my phone, but there is are videos or any of my movies synced to it. In the Settings/General on the phone itself, I supposedly have five videos, yet none show up in the photos/videos folder. WTH is going on?

Roger Thompson

I reverted back from iTunes 11 to 10 as I found 11 so bad. From this discussion it doesn’t sound like I will ever be able to upgrade …

Joe Cindy Stiene

iTunes 12 has also eliminated the ability to add notes to saved podcasts via the get info menu (lyrics dialogue box under the old versions). (This was a feature I use heavily with a couple of favorite podcasts) I’ve tried adding notes through the description dialogue box and the comment box, but nothing gets saved. Not only is this annoying for new podcast eps I like to save, but this version of iTunes has “lost” all the notes I added from over 4 years of older saved episodes. Grrr!!!

Ted Goldstein

Yes I want my sidebar back. Yes I wish Apple had made new views available instead of forcing them on us. Yes, I can not believe they got rid of list view!
Yes I can’t find anything anymore and even find myself just forgoing listening to my music rather than have to fight itunes 12. I look at that little orange icon and think, hmm do I want to click on that and wait for the spinning beachball of Mavericks and then try to search for my music in 10 thousand stupid little squares? naaaa
I am so sorry I let it upgrade and want to go back to 10.7. Why did you betray us Apple?

Valerie O’Brien

Is there a bug that randomly makes some playlists in iTunes look empty when there are definitely songs there? All my playlists sync normally, and I can see the songs on my iPhone and nano. The playlists only look empty in iTunes.
Has anyone else experienced this?

Andreas H Aus B

iTunes 12 is a catastrophy ob biblical proportions. I changed from Version 10.7 because I got problems with it, hoping These probs would be gone with #12. What I got is (n.b.: I am using iTunes mainly to manage lots of subscribed podcasts and to put them on my iPod):
– no more cover flow I knew that before but I can’t stop missing it.
– podcasts that I already deleted from the playlist reappear after restarting iTunes
– which is especially annoying as deleting Podcasts, no matter how many of thm and no matter how large the files are, takes 16 seconds. Every f***ing time! And every deletion occupies the computer’s processor up to50 percent (we’re talking a dual core with two x 2.900 GHz…).
– chapters not visible anymore and thus cannot be accessed directly
– no more possibility of deleting podcasts from the playlist without deleting them from the HDD

And so on and so forth. I don’t know what Apple was thinking with this Version, if they were thinking at all.
If any of my above complaints result not from bad programming on Apple’s side but from me being too stupid, please let me know. But, please, no Apple shortcuts, as I am using Windows! 😉

tlhIntoq

If you select several ‘albums’ that are really one album with different artist you’re SUPPOSED to be able to get-info and set the album-artist field to “various artists”. This will make it list as one album. EXCEPT Itunes looses track of most (if not all) of the songs. Take the soundtrack to “House M.D. tv show” for example. 30 songs by different artists, so it showed as 30 albums. When I selected them all and set them to “Various artists” for the album artist field they all disappeared from iTunes. They still exist on the hard drive though. You can’t drag them back into iTunes because somewhere it still knows about them and won’t re-add the same file (no dupes). But yet it doesn’t know about them ENOUGH to be able to display them. I have an iPhone6+ with iOS8.1, so I have no choice but to use the latest iTunes, otherwise I’d uninstall it and roll back to version 10

Phil E Mac

The way iTunes sync works overall makes no sense to me. I use my portable devices for different things than my computers. Drag and drop would be fine for me. I’m a longtime PC user who is considering a switch to MAC for various other reasons, but Apple’s control issues really make seriously consider if I would rather live with all the PC problems I hate.

STUFF

where is the phone sign?

Joel Brothers

They need to make iTunes so that you can make it stop playing after each track, if you want. The other feature I’d like to see is lyrics that auto scroll to the track. Other than that, it’s not a bad app.

Beat Scribe

I miss being able to see the order things were sorted in. I like to hit shuffle and see what’s coming up and adjust as needed. No anymore. Why remove functionality that’s already there? Most of the changes don’t help anyone. I had to do a bunch of hacks just to put a black background in so white light is not blazing in my face all day.

Myster_G

Thankfully, I read reviews like this before updating and will stay with 11 as long as possible or until Apple makes positive changes. “iTunes 12 – the solution to something that was never a problem!”

Suzanne Keene

iTunes 12 is horrible. Looking for an alternative.

http://kleinfreund.de/ Philipp Rudloff

My issue with iTunes 12 (apart from the UI confusion I still can’t handle properly) is the broken tagging mechanism in the info window. It’s overly aggressive. Entering “Something …” when there is already “SOMETHING …” in the database results in the uppercased version with no way to change it inside iTunes.

I need to type the correct version elsewhere and copy it back into iTunes. It’s not bad design. It is not functional.

Carleton Foxx

Apple has definitely lost its way. Their user interface people clearly don’t ever get out of their own bubble to see how real people use their products.

The idea of a file system is to make it easier to find files, not hide them in ever-deeper layers of menus. And thank you for alerting me to the concept of contextual menus. I had no idea such a dumb idea existed.

Reg Riemer

I’m really good with the Mac, been a power user on Mac since the 512k, the new iTunes is a disaster, I can’t figure it out, its so un Mac like, its almost like they sub contracted the design to Microsoft. Reg Riemer

blauwemug

iTunes 12 is becoming One. Huge. Irritation. I’ve sorted all my music over the years in iTunes (all physical cd’s in the attic, having kids and toys instead..) and tried to have all metadata complete or at least correct. And especially the covers as I think in visuals. Now, every time I try to add or change _anything_ an album or song, the cover disappears instantly every time. And whatever data I changed, does not get saved. I can fill it in, click OK and nothing changes. Option-click for the iTunes11 look does not help either. And all I find on the internet are a lot of iTunes12 irritations and bugs. Nowhere do I see Apple responding anywhere to any of these issues. I want an update with fixes! Maybe not my problems specifically, but anybody’s problems with v. 12. With bringing back options that users, clients of Apple, want to see in the product. The software is there to serve customers, right? It’s not a Sales Program for Apple employees, it is a system voor u.s.e.r.s. Let’s serve those users in the first place, shall we, Apple?

u2ps40

Under your second point, “The Annoying Info Window” is there a way to change the genre of a movie purchased in iTunes? This view for me is totally greyed out for movies purchased from iTunes and the genres apple creates are all over the place.

Eric Kruse

I just installed version 12 and the biggest problem is that the sound gets choppy if I run Chrome. For example, as I type this, the music is stuttering (for lack of a better word). What is up with that? Is there a way to go back to previous versions?

steveL

I downloaded itunes1 the day it came out. Loved it. They have slowly ruined it though. Am I suddenly very dumb? Why can I no longer drag my selected wavs into the ‘playlists’ column? This was great, and time saving, without having to create a ‘+’ every time.

DawnTreader

“What other annoyances or problems have you encountered in the new iTunes 12?”

iTunes 12…

md

TV shows do not group properly- sometimes I get a couple of sorts for the same season although the fields are all properly sorted. Cant seem to find the issues.

toloupe

iTunes 12 has just wiped all the (12GB) music on my ipod leaving a bunch of old meta data and images that suggest I have some tracks when in fact i dont. i tunes will not display these files so that i can delete them so i dont hink I have a coice but to system restore. I was using manual to just drap and drop tracks. this is a very new i pod and someone else’s (thank god)very new mac. Apple is a disaster….period!

Tilly Digs

If I needed another reason not to upgrade to Yosemite, the 60 comments that I just finished reading here about iTunes 12 made it a no brainer. Every release since 9 has been like someone has come into my home office, totally rearranged everything in the most unintuitive way, (like putting the stapler in the back of a metal file drawer and printer inside the waste paper basket) and for no apparent reason. Then I’m left no choice but to accept it, deal with it as is, knowing one thing is for sure, with the next release it’s only going to get worse.
What happened to the beautiful simplicity that Apple was so renown? I remember how focused and serially determined Steve Jobs was to make things simple, so intuitive that my grandmother would give it a go. Some things should not be changed, like tampering with the architecture of how music inventory is organized.

Apple got it, didn’t think it was good enough, (probably because it was too simple for their complex brains) then went rabid on “all new look and design” and destroyed iTunes in doing so. It’s a lot harder to create something simple to use, than complex. What a waste, creating unnessecary frustration from a loyal customer base, never mind stupid.

jeffbbz

NOOOO! They got rid of the ability to hold down option and do get info with the latest update!!!! Now there seems there is no way to get the old window back! aaaaahhhhhh! Itunes!!!!!!!! ahhhhhh!

Pete Thompson

I’m mystified by the disappearance of the ‘track’ number on the info display, although it is visible in the’Songs’ view; none of the posts I’ve seen seem to address this.

4SmithJohn

I really miss cover flow. I would at least like an option to see a large size version of a CD cover without the miniplayer functions hiding most of it. I am an artist, and have enjoyed album/CD art since I began listening to music in my teens. Apple is taking away from that experience. Why offer any album art views at all if they are going to be even smaller than an actual CD?

Automated_Reply

On a Mac, you can Command-Click on the album cover at the top of the iTunes window to open a large version of the album cover.

MC Reader

Is there a way to play music continuously on multiple devices when iMatch is enabled? Similar to podcasts…

Roger Moos

yes this version sucks – They are deleting things from my devices – If I mix a playlist with my recorded music and music downloaded from apple – they remove them!!! Why are they modifying my systems – I am outraged – I have used iTunes for a long time but this is the last straw – they better fix this fast or I will join a class action law suit !!! Some songs I have bought have been damaged the last 30 seconds is missing – it took support 45 minutes to help and then have to give a credit to download the song again – I am not going thru my entire library to find damaged stuff – stay off my system. Removing my playlist – for what ever reason is totally crazy what where they thinking.
Ever notice the interface sucks – really how hard is it to put back the button on the slider so you can repeat things or go back 30 seconds. I hope someone important from APPLE is reading this – they are making a lot of people mad

Sunrise250

One thing for sure: Apple’s constant wrecking of iTunes has pushed me toward music streaming services and that does not include iTunes Radio!

Spooky Mormon Hell Dream

Whoever the product manager is for iTunes 12 should be fired. It’s a disaster.

Eve Brockmann

I’ve found a workaround for changing column sorting on your iPod while
viewing in iTunes 12. Select your iPod icon from the row of choices. In
the sidebar, under On My Device, click Music. At the far right of the
grey bar that the Music header is in, click the Add To… button (I had
to wait a minute and a half for it to process. Your mileage may vary).
In the sidebar that appears on the right side, click the Sort by _____
option and choose your column type. Click Done. It’s shitty having to
wait but it does allow you to change the sort option somewhat more
directly than otherwise. I think I’ll be trying to reinstall iTunes 11
soon!

Julie Terryberry

i have one thing to say and its about the side bar issue since thats what freaked me out immediately when i updated itunes. as soon as this thing helped me locate my side bar on my home videos i went. YEY.

Branden Duxbury

Here’s my problem, iTunes won’t play any of my music unless it’s an itunes version I don’t know why it’s doing it but it’s very annoying I can’t hear any of the music I want to hear because it isn’t from itunes

mb presents

that sounds weird. what are the file endings that itunes doesn’t play?

barely_free

Apple GUI interface design has really lost its way ever since Jony Ive has taken over. He is not good at SW (actually thats being kind – he is terrible, has no eye for style or color) but he is brilliant at HW.

Caline Tan

I’ve got a issue here. There used to be a tick box next to every songs and you can untick box for selected songs so that when I create a smart playlist, I would be able to select use only ticked songs. The tick boxes seem to have disappeared.

I’m also struggling to turn off the QuickTour page that pops up everytime I start iTunes and it’s getting annoying.

Ryan Erickson

Did you ever find a solution for this? I am having the same problem since updating.

1watching1

Apple programmers look for new ways to annoy and frustrate Apple users.

1watching1

How can I get the simple song list back? By artist?

Allama

I cannot sync my iPod Touch 5 and iPhone 6 using the new iTunes 12.1.2 :/

Movie Blue Diving Suit

Would actually be a tip if you clearly explained how to add the sidebar back in.

http://www.djhomeless.com/ DJ Homeless Mike

How do you hide album artwork?

Valerie Lovelace

Hate that it automatically changes my music. How can I turn that off?

Robert Longman

My problem with iTunes 12 is that it continues to have the spinning disk problems when resizing a window or scrolling. Granted, it’s a big library. But there must be a way around having to wait for the disk to stop spinning in order to play the song.

Ivan

I agree it is a complete disaster. I m furious with apple for allowing so a stupid move with iTunes. Main reason I have an iPhone because it used to be simple to use. Everything made sense not like other programs. Now I really hated this freaking iTunes 12. I have spent so much money buying music from IT so I can relax listening to it. I hope they reconsider allowing people to go back to the previous version or they are going to start losing a lot of customer starting with me and my family, we have iphones and feel the same way.

Pute-Acier

Could somebody help me and tell me how to make a “genre” research in the tracks directory? I am making musical playlist almost every day for my work and since the “forced” update of itunes 12, I can’t use it as previously!

Zaheen Memon

All I want to do is change Filename to Track name. I have a collection of Lectures. I want to use their filenames instead of tracknames. iTunes 12 doesnt let me use Doug’s Script to rename them anymore. Anyone has any suggestions? iTunes 12, Yosemite.

Sal Carone

Ok, I hope this isn’t just me. Everytime I try to edit anything (righ click, edit info), the entire album list disappears. If I click on the item it appears, but list just becomes invisible. Very annoying.
Is there a setting to change this? Help

So far Itunes 12.3.2 S*cks

David Bernier

Every time Apple updates iTunes, I have to figure how to use it over and again. I just wish they would stop fiddling with the interface once and for all.

http://blog.imran.com/ imrananwar

How does Apple expect to narrow the choice of apps in a word search like “Watermark” if I can’t Sort by Popularity or Price or Recently Added? Absolute conversion of a once decent Apple product to one that only Microsoft “user experience” or user interface designers could love.

(Full disclosure, I worked in client strategy consulting at MSFT for 3 years until Feb 2015). 🙂

Imran

Dolmance

All I want to do is turn these darn boxes off — mini player, that thing with the “upcoming songs,” that I can’t get rid of, and if I could go back to the old Itunes that wasn’t entirely devoted to separating people from their money, I would.

I hate this new ITunes. I’ve been using it for about a month and the more I learn about it, the more awful it is.

So, if anyone can tell me how to get rid of the stupid mini player and the even worse upcoming songs box, I’d so appreciate it.

the_lemon_song

I click an album and it ‘drops down’ with the track listings etc. I hit the play arrow and nothing happens !! Having to double-click the first track and then add all the rest using ‘play next’ function. Help !! Anyone ?

Gary Strangman

Has anyone else lost music with iTunes 12.2.1 & 12.2.2? My library went from 25,500 song to about 500. The 500 were from iTunes store. Most of my music has had the metadata changed, artwork and tracks lost etc. and after about 7 hours with Apple Support they can’t fix it and are telling me the metadata was corrupt. It’s my files and my metadata exactly how I want it. How can Apple think it is OK to change someones personal property like this. How would they feel if they came home and found the furniture rearranged and most of their art and other stuff missing? I think they would be calling the cops but what are we meant to do? I went back to iTunes 11.4 but then the OS 10.10.5 update installed 12.2.2.

Oliver Ross

I can no longer use the Get Info command in iTunes 12 since this triggers the disappearance of the information/list/metadata display relating to the relevant CD that I am in the process of editing. I can bring it back by clicking “Get Info” on an adjacent CD, but that rather defeats the purpose. I am running Windows 10.

Jim Scofield

I listen to audio books, right know I have almost 1000 books. In the older versions of iTunes, probably about 9 or 10, I could add information to the list such as “grouping”, who the narrator or artist was and the year it was released. Then after I listened to a book and removed it from my iPod it would indicate on the list when it was last listened to. I now have version 12.2.2.25 and I can’t do any of that. I use to be able to pick the books I wanted to listen to copy them to a playlist folder, arrange the order that I wanted to listen to them and then sync that with my iPod, that doesn’t word either and now to even get them on the iPod I have to change the type from audiobook to music and I still can’t arrange the listen order. Apple did us no favors with these newer versions. I would like to see a way to dump this version and go back to the earlier version that worked best for me.

Jackie

I have movies on list view, with many columns. The search function will only search movie “name” column, not the “composer” (directors) “artist” (actors) as it use to. Any fix for this?

Gene Norris

In iTunes 12.2.2, It is not possible to batch-edit song titles, for example to remove a string from all titles. Option followed by File—>Get Info will indeed bring up the old Info window for a single song but you can’t move to the next file from that window. Maybe Doug Adams’s thingy will work. I’n guessing this titles are somehow tied to Gracenote/CDDB.

Frankfurter Bindlespin

I was using iTunes 10.6 or 10.7. I had tried iTunes 11 (it upgraded unexpectedly when I upgraded my entire OS) but iTunes 11 was terrible. On iTunes 10, I had all my music organized & set up beautifully. Album art flow was super important. Controlable and copyable playlists were also a staple for me. And the very managable podcasts… These were all things that I loved about iTunes 10. So, I ditched iTunes 11 & re-installed iTunes 10. That was about a year ago. Then, about a week ago, I come & sit down on my computer & somehow, WITHOUT ANY OF MY AUTHORIZATION WHATSOEVER, *ahem* somehow, iTunes 12 was up & running on my MacBook Pro. WTF? How did that happen? How can Apple or whoever just come into my computer and upgrade/update things without my permission or without my even knowing? OK. (breathe) That being said, I decided to try it out. Because Apple was/is too cheap or shitty or whatever to allow iTunes 10.7 to communicate with my iPad. So, much to my chagrin and kind of against my will, I decided to test-drive it for a while. I’ve now gotten a little used to it and figured out some of the tricks. Also, I can connect with my iPad now (which I should have been able to do with 10.7!!). But but but but…. iTunes 12 STILL SUCKS compared to iTunes 10. I agree with other commenters that it’s SUPER SAD the route Apple has taken. It’s my impression that Steve Jobs knew how to deliver products that the consumer would find useful, inviting, cutting-edge for creative control. Now, it seems that Apple is focused on using their software as platforms for marketing and profiteering & not for innovative uses of the client/consumer/user folk. Shame on you Apple. Super shame on you.

etmax

Well I’ve seen everything now, the only way Apple can reduce the visual appeal of iTunes any more is to make it white text on a white background with white borders.

And what’s with this flat look? Is no one running university courses on proper visual design any more?

etmax

Forgot to mention, I’ve decided to write my own music player from scratch with all of the features I want. Then some stupid child can’t design a way the things I like. I’m not sure how well documented the iPhone/iPod SW interface is, so I might have to switch to an Android phone but they’ve pissed me off to the point where I want to ditch them.

jf

I only use Itunes for podcasts and I like to manage everything manually, adding and deleting as I go along. I used to be able to put new podcasts at the bottom of my playlist and delete the ones I’ve already heard. Now Itunes automatically deletes podcasts I haven’t heard yet when I sync. I’ve tried everything I can think of to turn-off this automatic feature, but with no luck.

polarbear4

i can’t even add songs (or at least the tracks that i want) to my library anymore. not through the drop down menu, not by dragging, much less get them into a playlist, which might work by dragging them and having the sidebar appear, if i can ever get them into itunes. aaaarrrrgghh! why is wonderful Mac so user UNfriendly in itunes. and i don’t get Photos, either. but maybe this is all user error.

Emmanuel Nestor

My itunes 12 in my ipad I cant see some music by Artist, I can only see all my music by arranging A – Z music not artist wise. Called stupid Apple techs, they cant even fix it!! Anyone knows something compatible or a replica of itunes I can download for my ipad??

PLEASE HELP. 12.3 freezes while playing movies. At first it was fine, but I’m only about 27 minutes in (to a movie purchased and downloaded via the iTunes Store) and it will not play for more than 5 seconds (if I can even get THAT much out of it) until it freezes again completely. Can anyone help me please?

mardrom

Some of my movies have greyed out stars. Anybody know how to get rid of them? Yes tried the normal way of swiping left. Does not work. Stars still grey? Anybody?

sudon’t

I wish they’d make iTune 12 more like iTunes 10.7. I hated iTunes 11, too. I cannot understand why they took a perfectly good interface, and made it so difficult to use. Also, I miss having the artwork in the sidebar. I don’t want to use the Mini-Player, just to see artwork. One window is enough. It’s also become more difficult to manage podcasts since 10.7, you can’t find the commands or settings, and worst of all, you can’t “downgrade” anymore. Meanwhile, since the 12.3.1.23 update, I can’t even restore my iPod, let alone sync it. I’m lucky I still have a Mavericks installation I can use for that.
For years I used to tell people to use iTunes, and tout its benefits. Now, when people say “iTunes sucks”, it’s hard to argue with them.

Joanne Dodds

The problem for me is that Im a singer and i use itunes for my backing tracks, when i make my playlist 1st set, 2 set, it doesnt allow the check boxes on the left to uncheck so it will stop after every song, in the actual music library it does have the check box but not on a play list. Previous itunes did this for me so now im having to dive over to my mac to press the the space bar, very unpro.

joy66

What a waste of time. Massive fail.

Larry Richelli

The one removed feature that absolutely pisses me off is the ability to open playlists in their own window. I know you can edit playlists and they sort of open in their own window but come on apple….

I am really upset with iTunes 12.3.25 released December 2015. I’m not a computer person, so it is pretty difficult to determine if the problem is compatibility with windows 10 or what… The thing is: when I add a song and go to the INFO WINDOW, and change the any info, the song doesn’t file to the specified folder as it did before… I don´t know if I am being clear about this, but it is creating me a lot of unknown artist and unknown albums and I don´t understand why…. Please help! It is no fun anymore to try to organize my itunes media folder in Windows 10. Thanks!!!!

Paul Halac

Knowing that I didn’t like or want iTunes 12, I innocently chose to upgrade my iPhone to iOS 9.2 at Apple’s suggestion. However, they never warned me that upgrade would require iTunes 12 in order to sync my iPhone. I would have never upgraded iOS because my dislike of iTunes 12 was so strong. Apple’s tech support told me there was no return path and I had no choice. That is what really irks me. Whatever happened to “try it before you buy it” or, dare I suggest, “backward compatibility”? Apple’s programmers really dropped the ball on this one but apparently don’t care anyway.

I hate to say it but Apple is beginning to look more and more like Microsoft.

rere

upgraded because of my phone but can’t see the full names of apps in the app list – the column is too narrow and not adjustable – is there a fix for this?

chezron

When I do a search in itunes it only displays the items in the alphabet that fit on the screen, there is no way that i can see to advance to the rest of the pages. How do I see all of the matches that exist?

brooklynfoo

this is a totally random issue Ive never seen before but when i input an artist or song name from an uploaded cd, it skips out of order and automatically goes to the front of the typing field. It sometimes gets to the point where it assumes you mean another artist and wont even let you correct it! Its the most infuriating thing Ive ever seen software do in my life. I woulnt wish this program on someone doing hard time in prison. Jobs would never allow this to happen!

Deedon4

iTunes 12.3.2.25/Yosemite 10.10.5.
When I use MiniPlayer it will only play a couple of songs then I get the spinning beachball until I force quite iTunes.
Also, I have recently added a few albums and they show in the “Recently Added” section at the top of the Albums page. They are also in the main section of All Albums. I’d like to have them removed from the “Recently Added” section while remaining in the main listing. I removed on from the recently added section and lost the entire album. I was able to reinstall it but it is back in both places.
Any ideas on either concern?

Righteous Isthelord

I have been using Macs since the late 80s and iTunes since day one. The degradation in usability is extremely frustrating. I used to look forward to upgrades by Apple. Now I dread them. I guess they need to find someone with Steve Jobs skill of screaming at people for making such garbage. “Design” used to mean something beyond the superficial.

TinCanPhone24

I’m getting the message loud and clear… though I thought I was just getting stupid in my old age… it seems this new iTunes is a piece of crap.
I’ve been using iTunes for years to organize conference and seminar recordings, and create a group …. often 25 sessions or more… on an mp3 playlist. I do the tagging, add a photo of each presenter to their track, and put them on a CD or a USB stick.

A nice little product for the attendees and those who weren’t at the conference.
They load them in their iPhone or iPod, or play them on their car mp3 audio player…

NOW, when I add the artwork to the tracks in the playlist, it takes the photos like normal… but by the time I’m through the 20 or more tracks, I look at the playlist, and the artwork from track one has populated through all the tracks.
Note I’m not adding the artwork to the entire playlist by grouping the tracks and using the info window…. I’m adding their photos one at a time, track by track.
When I try to replace the ‘track 2’ photo with the correct one… again it takes it at first, saves it for a minute or two… but then it changes again.

Does anyone know what’s going on in this case?

Ur Kondor

iTunes 13 should be iTunes 7.

Dee Barretto

I have both mp3 and mp4 (videos) in the same playlist… its a testing platform so to say. In previous versions of iTunes the song switched mp3 – mp4 – mp3, no problem. But in iTunes 12.3.2.35 (64 bit) it skips over the viddeos and loops back to the first song in the list.
Anyone facing this issue?

Mhelm123

I’ve been an iPhone, iPad user since the iPhone 4. I’m looking at a Samsung S7 now. Why? iTunes! It has become so cumbersome, so user unfriendly and so difficult to catalog my music, movies and TV shows in any way that makes the slightest sense, that I’m just going to cash in my Apple devices.

djbethell

Anyone know where the play-by-date choice has gone?

joehillwillout

I wouldn’t mind so much that updated versions of itunes seem to get worse and worse if it weren’t for the fact that Apple makes it so difficult to revert to earlier versions. The only reason I keep updating is that I stupidly assume they will be taking care of the mistakes they made in the previous updates. But, instead, they just double down on them and then add a whole new series of mistakes. 12 is abominable.

Elsa

I am furious with the iTunes development team, and I think they should lay off the Aderall, or not schedule major deadlines for the week before or after Burning Man. That being said, I need help: I have a complex system of tagging in the Groupings column that allows me to quickly search types of tracks in my library of 35,000+ songs. I have been working on these tags for over 10 years. With iTunes 12, the search function no longer recognizes a search for multiple tags. It will only find one tag at a time. For example, if it’s a dinner party, I might search “ambient jazz lounge”. Before, all songs that had those 3 tags would appear. Now, NOTHING appears if I search multiple tags, only if I search Ambient OR Jazz OR Lounge. This renders my 10 year organization system pretty much useless, because I cannot specify my own playlists of my own tags. WTActualF??? Do the people at iTunes even bother to test their software with real users before they impose unnecessary changes on us in order to justify their jobs??? I’m scared to update iTunes anymore because every time I do, it’s another glitch. Anyone else have this problem? Has this been fixed yet? I got rid of my iPhone and switched to Android because the iPhone was the only thing forcing me to keep up with iTunes. They are losing some serious long-term user loyalty over there in the iTunes department. Help!

Scot McKibbin

Similar issues…
I have spent countless hours gathering data on my collection and adding it to the “get info” in iTunes on my iMac. I have added Billboard/Cashbox chart info, sales numbers/certifications, release dates/recording dates, recording studio, lyrics, interesting antidotes, etc, etc,etc.
Prior to the September 2016 iOS update, I could access this information on my iPhone/iPad by clicking on the playing song at the bottom of the screen then pressing the cover art to toggle to my data. Well… No longer!!
I was on line “chatting” with Apple this week for at least 3.5 hours, working with 4 different techs and higher up the food chain folks. Finally, they confessed that that functionality has been removed. What a WASTE of time!!! I thought computers were supposed to make our lives easier, NOT annoy the HELL out of us. They gave me a site where I can post my concern where I was assured the engineers looked for feedback. However, from reading here, they really don’t give a crap! Appears it’s Their Way or the Highway…
So disappointed…
I got an email requesting feedback from my support experience BUT they probably don’t give a crap about that feedback either.

Elsa

Is there a way to revert to previous versions of iTunes? Preferably pre-10? I have one 2003 17″ Powerbook that I am cherishing as a relic of functionality in addition to my corrupted iTunes on my every day laptop. Also, hoarding iPods. Worst move ever, and an insult to say that their Chinese factories couldn’t get the parts. I’ts just patronizing.

MrRagu

Struggling with the new 12.4.whateverversion on Mac.

So many problems with this starting with clicking on songs in a playlist to drag up in the order then poof once you drop them the suddenly become unhighlighted and songs down where you just drag from become highlighted.

Seriously? Who at Apple in their right mind would change iTunes to break something so simple?

Then it AUTO changes the color of the playlist and the art at the top. Just by dragging songs??

WTF are these idiots thinking??!?!?!?!?!

This is a joke. I am going to have to uninstall this garbage and find an older version on the web and go back to when I could actually use iTunes.

Tom Pav

How do I load cd’s to iTunes without having them show in “songs” ? I wish to add Christmas music to make a playlist but I prefer to keep “songs” separate so I can play them on my computer without having Christmas music intermixed. Thanks

Skyefleur

hi guys, do you know if there is a way to switch from the images (icons) display back to listing display as in tree style display in music library. Plus i don’t understand the recent tab (in library) anymore, it shows everything….. Not only what was recently added, but the entire library, which makes zero sense. I’ve looked pretty much everywhere and i’m thinking they forced the image display on us. I’d like the “detail” display everywhere and i can only manage it in some of the categories, i get it for albums, but i can’t get it for compilations, recent, genres, artists etc. Only songs can be detailed and that makes sense… (i dread the day they force onme icons for those too)

David Loewen

In order to accomodate a recent purchase of an iPod Touch 6th Generation, I had to upgrade my iTunes from v10.7 (the last good version in my opinion) to the latest v12.5. Man is it awful! I have never seen such a complicated Apple program, or music player for that matter. Ok, maybe Windows Media Player is a close second, but I always use it in Mini mode, so I don’t have to mess with it.

So many iTunes features have either changed or been removed since 10.7, that it’s hardly the same program. Whatever good thing Apple had going with iTunes is nearly lost (the iTunes store is still a nice resource for free podcasts). It seems the people who were trying to make Apple software easy to use have abandoned ship. It has taken me several days to get back some of the familiar functionality of my media library. I always thought iTunes was one of Apple’s best products. Even though I am a PC user, I could appreciate it’s slick graphics and relatively clutter-free interface. But since version 11, it’s really been going downhill.

As a result, I will likely ditch the iPod altogether and go back to v10.7 on my PC and use a Smartphone or Sony MP3 player for portable use. If anyone at Apple happens to read this, please bring back the simple, elegant functionality of your older software – you’re leaving alot of us to look for better alternatives.

Gus Awsum Alfonso

sidebar life

Faye Green

old songs I just want to delete from library and computer is impossible, It is driving me insane.
permanently deleting older music no longer of interest and adding newer music shouldn’t be a hassle

John

How about the completely idiotic way of managing media on an iPhone? For audiobooks and music, the library is presented as one ling list of FILES, no grouping of any sort. Just what I wanted to see, every freaking song and chapter of every audiobook I have on my phone in one huge long list of text, totally makes sense. Great job Apple.

Garfield George

i hate looking at four columns when i look at my playlist..i like looking at the older sidebar playiist….is there any way to get just one side bar playlist

Drive-by-Comment

12.5 When looking at my home videos in list mode is there a way to get rid of the “Artwork” column? I want a simplified interface like in 10.7 that allows me to sort through tons of training videos (home videos) and video podcasts and create playlists and transfer them to iPad.

Chris Ryan

i have tried this “if you’re familiar with the older window, and would prefer using it, you can still do so. Just select one or more files, press the Option key, right-click on the selected file(s), and choose Get Info. You’ll see a window almost exactly like that of iTunes 11 and earlier:”

but cannot get it to work, currently on 12.5.5 can anyone test this out and let me know if it works on other versions of iTunes 12? thanks!

i’m trying to be able to edit the “show” tag in a music file (i use it as a factor in a smart playlist)

Romancitizen

I just created a new playlist in itunes, but it isn’t syncing with my apple (!) mp3 player – any thoughts ?
itunes is the biggest pile of pants EVER, I switched to it when the battery of my old Sony mp3 player packed up and I (mistakenly) bought an apple. I used Windows media player for the Sony, which was SOOOO simple compared to itunes. I spent 30+ years in system design, I could come up with something better in 5 minutes.
My OS is windows btw.

Cyclohexane

I just miss the colors in iTunes 11. They were great, now it’s just white and boring.

Trish Sutter Pmp

It only displays 10 songs at a time. How do you fix that? I want to see my complete list and where it is on my hard drives. How do you fix that? everytime it upgrades, it forgets your settings… Drives me….

Dls Hopkins

My Songs Library has the scroll frozen about half way down the window. Instead of scrolling the full window, only the lower half scrolls. I have found nothing on how to fix this issue.

Nick Wright

The one thing that really bugs me is that itunes insists on playing random segments of tracks as it adds a folder & you can`t turn it off until it finishes. Why does it need to play ANYTHING when adding a folder?

mo takpec

Where is my CD? I can’t import music from CD any more?
What a rip off!!!!

Kevin Thomas

I have imported songs into iTunes that are in the .wav format. I then converted them to .mp3 format in iTunes, so I have 2 versions of each song now, which is what I wanted.

However, when I navigate to my iTunes folder and open the folder with the album name, I only see the .wav files and cannot find the .mp3 files anywhere. They show up in the iTunes player, but not in the folders. I need to be able to access the mp3s because I sell my music online in this format and need to grab the files.

Does anyone know why both versions of songs show up in the iTunes player but only the wav versions show up in the iTunes folder?

Thanks, Kevin

Joyce A. King

Since I’ve updated iTunes, it no longer lists how many times I’ve listened to my top 25 most played songs. Why would they remove that?? How can I get it back??

Dean & Donna Huffman

On iTunes 12 why in the h*ll would apple remove the app store, make it impossible to update apps, sync apps, delete apps PERMANENTLY and other things regarding apps on your pc? This is as bad as it gets.

OG

I am new to this apple stuff and so far not impressed, i install i tunes because someone gave me a an IPOD 4 well my windows 10 saw it long enough to transfer my music after that it never saw it again, i am so fed up that i want to cancel my account guess what you know how your name shows up on the top right and you can click on it and see your account well mine does not all i want to do is listen to the music i have purchased over the years through legitimate sites well i find my android phone works best i will carry a battery pack with me to keep it charged. sorry for the rant back to problem of getting my account name to show up. Any ideas.

Doug Johnson

Hey Kirk – why can’t I get the “posters” for movies in a playlist to be alpha by title – it seems as if they’re using some other piece of data to sort themselves. Groups of them are alphabetized – others are way out of whack. Thanks.

jedy123

Both the playlists ‘Most Often Played’ and ‘Recently Played’ are grouping all songs by artist even though I have them to be ordered most often played and most recently played. Also the Most Often Played list no longer shows the play count on each track. Everything worked perfectly with iTunes 11. Also when ripping a CD, you can no longer select individual tracks to be ripped and are forced into ripping the whole CD. I suppose I should be grateful Apple still allows CD ripping – I’m sure they’d prefer we all buy off the iTunes store or use their awful Apple Music app.

Denise

I have no Get Info option when I right click an album on my 2012 Windows Dell laptop.
I’m trying to merge split albums in iTunes 12.7.2
Yikes

Slartibartfaster

All I can say is that I wish I’d never upgraded from iTunes 10. In 12 Home Sharing no longer works, one song will play and then the next song doesn’t load and iTunes stops. Most disturbingly, artwork for multiple albums just randomly disappears. This happens on old files, new files, it doesn’t matter, nor does the hard disk on which the files reside. I have multiple external hard disks that hold my collection. As a hard disk filled up with music I’d buy a new one and designate a folder on the new disk as the music library. It worked fine with iTunes 10, now with 12 I’m finding the library loses track of the location of a tiny portion of my music. Combined with the loss of artwork and I’m really frustrated.

Pam Clifford

I have a home movie stored in itunes and now it says that itunes doesn’t support it. How can I get it back?

JeTo

I have sierra, pages showed up offering X, Now I can’t shut off my computer. And I can’t dump the offer. i’m in a bind. I don’t want to upgrade.

Ken

How do you get “shuffle all” UN-selected? Clicking on it does nothing…Nevermind… I found it under controls. too many places to check for different options. I just want to listen to music. Why do Apple’ predesigns make stuff harder to use. UX Designers trying to justify their job?